WE are now to have a law which will allow terrorist suspects to be held by the police for up to six weeks without being charged with any offence.

This police-state power is necessary, we are told, because the threat of terror attacks against us is so severe that it justifies overthrowing the very principles that have stood at the heart of British law since the signing of Magna Carta in 1215.

These draconian powers were sanctioned by the House of Commons just three days after the death toll of British servicemen in Afghanistan reached 100.

This seven-year conflict is necessary, we are told, because it prevents the Taliban re-establishing the country as a base for its activities and launching increased terror attacks against Britain.

So what do these two events tell us about how the War on Terror is going?

Well the 42-day ruling has been sanctioned despite the fact that no evidence has been produced that any case against alleged terrorists has ever been lost because investigating of[f_i]cers ran out of time.

It was arm-wrestled through the House of Commons by a majority of just nine. It is so undesirable that 306 of our MPs voted against it.

Yes, of course the cops should be given all the help they need in bringing would-be bombers to justice. But giving them more resources could turn out to be far less expensive than giving away the rights of the individual. Changing the laws on phone-tap evidence, thus making convictions easier to achieve, could be far less problematic than changing the principles on which we have run our society for centuries.

No other civilised country has thought it necessary to introduce a 42-day law. Having decided to do it is a further step down a dark and dangerous road. We are on the verge of becoming a country where perfectly innocent people can be locked up for six weeks. And then handed compensation, perhaps over £100,000, to show how sorry we are.

Even if it is never used, and there are those who say the regulations are so complex as to be unworkable, its very existence gnaws away at what we are supposed to stand for.

And remember that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was introduced to deal with terrorism. It is now commonly used by local councils for spying on families who may be suspected of nothing more sinister than misusing disabled badges. Or, as this newspaper revealed, putting youngsters under surveillance who may be guilty of underage drinking.

New extradition agreements with the US, introduced to hasten the removal of terrorists suspects, have instead been used to whisk businessmen across the Atlantic to face fraud charges.

In Afghanistan we are now three deaths nearer a state which is totally out of control. All the [f_i]ne words spoken about the killing of Privates Daniel Gamble, 22, Nathan Cuthbertson, 19, and David Murray, 19, by a suicide bomber in Helmand Province did nothing to clarify what our 7,800 troops actually doing there.

If Al Qaida is being so successfully suppressed by our presence in that country, why are we under such threat at home that we need the 42-day rule?

The reality is that what we are actually doing in Afghanistan, apart from squandering young lives, is supporting the biggest heroin industry in the world.

The poppy fields have doubled in size since 2003 and last year produced enough opium to make 880 tons of heroin, 93 per cent of world output.

And meanwhile the man we facilitated taking power in the country, Hamid Karzai, has appointed key figures in the drug trade into Government posts.

Whatever advances our scandalously under-resourced and under-paid troops make are inevitably reversed by an enemy fighting a guerrilla war and able to slip away to sanctuary in Pakistan.

And while British casualties mount -and do note that despite all the coverage of the 100 dead no figures are ever given for the wounded and the maimed - our Nato allies, including France, Germany and Italy stay in their camps, forbidden to join the fighting.

So at home we are giving away our freedoms in a battle against an enemy that usually turns out to consist of oldfashioned nutters and fantasists.

And in Afghanistan we are sacrificing young lives in a war that can never be won.

This fight is costing us not just 100 dead and unknown number of wounded but billions of pounds and the cornerstones of our way of life.

When you look at the balance sheet of the War on Terror, it is hard to escape the conclusion that we are losing, very badly.